Have I lost myself in me?

You will meet only very few people in your life who come into your life from nowhere and touch your heart and stay there forever. She is surely one of those I met. She couldn't have attracted me with just the typical brahmin style bindi on her forehead, the lean body, the heartwarming smile. But I had nothing else to say too. She was my class teacher from 4th to 7th standard and she was my inspiration to do well then. Whenever I think of her, I could just see the same face again in my imagination as if I am just talking to her now. Of course, I never met her after I left the school :(

Though I was not a great fan of kite flying, I used to join my friends and play during the windy days. We collect broken tube lights and powder them with the help of big stones around. We boil arrow root powder with vajram and mix it with kesari powder and the tube light powder to make maanja for the kite threads - we never did kite fighting though! I guess all the kite flyers who used maanja coated thread would have a little cut mark on their fingers. I still remember the deep cut it made on one of my friends' finger and the blood drops that drenched one full sheet of the newspaper.

Peak of the monsoon seasons never failed to bring the fishes from the near by lake to our streets and play grounds. It was fun chasing the swiftly moving, even on tar roads, small fishes. The fishes move a lot when it is just more than the drizzle and I, with my neighbourhood friends. never bothered about the rain. Calculating the fish position and splashing the moving mud water by our foot to catch them was the best of joys at that time. I used to drop the fishes in a bucket and let the bucket go slowly into the well which would have water almost up to the top. Few fishes would jump even before the bucket touches the water and few would not move at all. The new fishes always look so bright on the well water and one could watch them for hours. I could vividly recall those amazing scenes even now.

Now I am old enough to just stay and watch the kids play and do so many things that I can't even think of. I just tried to imagine my face during various stages of my childhood days. Apart from those that I could find in old photos, I could see nothing. I guess I have lost them all!

Kovil Pillai P.